


count my fingers, every last one

by thismagichour



Series: Bad Things Happen, but It'll Turn Out Okay [8]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I ain't got time to bleed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thismagichour/pseuds/thismagichour
Summary: Fjord and Beau have a lot in common, so they know when the other person is in bad shape. That doesn't mean they'll be honest about it.For the prompt "I ain't got time to bleed" for Bad Things Happen Bingo!
Relationships: Fjord & Beauregard Lionett
Series: Bad Things Happen, but It'll Turn Out Okay [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1181918
Comments: 10
Kudos: 85





	count my fingers, every last one

**Author's Note:**

> It has been exactly a year and two weeks since I posted my last Bingo prompt, but I'm not dead, dammit. The first half of this was written nearly a year ago, and I've been picking at it every other month for the last year. Today I finally managed to pull it together. Wonders will never cease. But I AM rusty, yikes. And no beta, as usual, so be kind about it, please.

Beau is used to being hurt. She’s been knocked down more times than she can count. Maybe that’s why she felt such an instant kinship with Fjord, who has the distinct feeling of someone who had gotten kicked around a lot in life. Yasha too, but she wears it differently. Fjord is the type of person that laughs with blood in his mouth. So is Beau. It’s the only time she’s laughing.

The group comes closer to death than ever before. During the long nights, Beau lies awake thinking about how fragile every one of her friends is, and how it makes her feel like overheated glass, one cool breath away from shattering. She can say that she’ll die for her friends, she can try, even, but the rest of them are so breakable. They’ll crumple long before she does. She has nightmares about being standing in the wreckage of what was once her party, blood running hot from her nose, tears running hotter from her eyes. A lot of her companions have dreams, gifts or warnings from their gods, but all she can hope is that Ioun has nothing to do with the bloody warnings from which she awakens. Beau doesn’t fear death. At least, not for herself. Death might be the best thing that can happen to a person like her.

Fjord is used to getting knocked down. A quirk from the blood in his veins is that usually after he gets knocked down, he gets back up. He never gets used to the _hurt_ , though. But they all share the hurt in this group. Caleb, for instance, seems to not even notice when he gets torn through like paper. He used to think that Yasha might keep going even after death. Now, he’s even surer of that. But of everyone, even if they all go down together, he feels like Beau is gonna be the one left standing in the wreckage. He doesn’t envy her that.

When he wakes from the snow in a mess of seaweed, he feels stronger, he feels _right_ for the first time in maybe his whole life. He takes Beau up on her offer of training, even though he knows he’ll never do anything even close to what she can do. He just desperately wants to keep the newfound strength he’s been given, wants to show the Wildmother he cares, that he’s trying. He stops having nightmares about Uk’otoa and starts having nightmares about flowers blooming in his lungs, choking him with their disappointment. He trains harder. Beau gives him bloody nose after bloody nose, and he is _fine_.

“How do you do it?” Fjord says, one morning, after a particularly rough yesterday. Beau is awake and training long before the rest of the group, her breath a visible force in the cold of the morning. Fjord is tense and aching, and everyone else is still fast asleep, and there Beau is, walking through the same exercises she must have done thousands of times, her feet steady, her face sure.

“Do what?” Beau says, a bare acknowledgement.

“Keep going. Wake up every morning. Do this,” Fjord gestures vaguely to encompass everything around them. Beau stops. She relaxes, trying to look casual, but Fjord has done this exact move enough to know she’s not quite pulling it off.

“I don’t have anything better to do,” Beau says, sitting and starting to unwrap her hands.

“Mother forbid you give your broken ribs a break,” Fjord says.

“You sound like Caduceus,” Beau grumbles. He joins her on the grass, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the rest of the group is still curled up in Caleb’s dome. Caduceus has wrapped around most of them to keep his feet in the boundaries, and Nott appears to be gnawing on one in her sleep. 

“Are you alright?” Fjord says.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Beau says dismissively, her focus entirely on her bloody knuckles. Fjord gently bumps her hand with his fingers.

“That seems fine,” he says.

“We all have bigger problems than bruised knuckles,” Beau says, her lips twisting in a dry smile as she looks over at him. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Fjord says, “but sleep could help some of them.” Beau raises an eyebrow toward the dome and returns to her wraps. The silence sits between them for a moment. Caduceus moves his foot and Nott is dragged with it. Fjord is beginning to suspect that Caduceus is awake, actually.

“Are you alright?” Beau says.

“Me? Of course,” Fjord says, surprised, “I didn’t take nearly as many hits as you did.” Beau looks at him, her eyes sharp, and Fjord isn’t sure why he feels defensive, but he does. After a long silence, Beau hums noncommittally and returns to inspecting her hands. 

“I see what you’re doing, you know,” Fjord says.

“Yeah?” Beau says, a single eyebrow raised.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk,” Fjord says, “but you’re not going to be able to deflect Caduceus or Jester, so you might as well get it over with with me.”

“I don’t need to tell you, Fjord,” Beau says, her voice low, “because you feel the same. You’re just a better liar.”

“I’m certain I feel worse,” Fjord says, bluntly, “but normally you and Jester have the optimism locked down, and ever since we saw your father everything with you seems a little…dire.” 

“I don’t know that anyone’s ever compared me to Jester like that before,” Beau says, the motions as she rewraps her hands stiff.

“Then they don’t know you like I do,” Fjord says.

“I just feel,” Beau says, slowly, like she’s forcing the words out, “like I have to hold everything together or I’ll fall apart. And I don’t have time to fall apart right now.”

“Beau,” Fjord says, softly, taking her hands, stilling her movements, “you’re bleeding.” Indeed, the new wraps on her hands are already damp with blood, and Fjord’s not sure if the injury was worse than it looked or if she had been too rough in rewrapping them. He suspects the latter. 

“I don’t have time to do that either,” Beau chokes out, and Fjord ignores her tensing as he pulls her into him.

“I get not everyone is gonna have a very public crisis where they lose their powers for a week like some of us have,” Fjord says, “but take it from me - this group is going to hold you together even when it feels like you don’t deserve it or the world is ending. That’s what they do. You’ve held us together so many times. Let us return the favor.”

“This sucks,” Beau says.

“It does,” Fjord says.

“I’m sorry for getting snot on you,” Beau says.

“I will remember this grievous crime against my person,” Fjord says. Beau laughs at that and pulls away, wiping her face and grinning. Fjord shoves her a little, and she shoves him back.

“I didn’t mean to make this about me,” Beau says, smile fading a little. “You can talk to me too, Fjord. I know you’re not sleeping well either.”

“I know,” Fjord says, “but I don’t know what to say yet. But when I figure it out, you will be the first to know.”

“I fucking better be,” Beau says, “this is twice now that I’ve cried on you, and the only other way I can think to repay the favor is to make you cry with this workout.”

“Noted,” Fjord says, “very noted.”

In the dome, Caduceus winks at Jester, who wiggles her eyebrows at him, and closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> We've done it, folks. I'm gonna try to keep pushing through prompts, but last time I said that, it was a year before I posted another. Let's all keep our expectations realistic.
> 
> Honestly, though, the thing that kept me picking away at it was people leaving comments. Every time I got one, I was like "yes, I need to get back to that!" Seriously, just a few days ago someone left a comment saying they were gonna binge the whole bad things series and it was the motivator for me to pick this up again. So, really, thank you folks.
> 
> Either way, I'm very active at my tumblr (@calebwidogasts) so join me there to hear from me more often!


End file.
